Sing Me To Sleep...

The radio was playing his favorite song that evening, 'Sing Me to Sleep’. But his mind was too preoccupied to notice the melodiously haunting tune. The first thing he noticed through his windshield was the evening sky which now was a light shade of purple instead of the mellow red he was accustomed to. He always wondered looking at it how much it resembled the red that her face became whenever she grew angry at him. He wished for the day the anger would vanish, once and for all. He knew he would hit the ground soon but his thoughts kept wandering to the good old memories he had treasured in the depths of his heart.

He could see his baby hands tracing the laugh lines on his mother’s face. Those serene eyes that lit up every time she saw him as though it had been years since she saw him last. He never had been able to do justice to the love with which she held him as her own. Some things were simply not meant to be, or perhaps as a step mother she was just the scape goat for his own fears, cliques and self-righteousness. He never had come to a conclusion about it. He knew the feeling of never being able to bear a child, your own blood, and cradling it in your arms, wouldn’t be much different than missing the warm embrace of your own mother. But life moves on and he had got used to the routine of lovingly hating her from a distance.

He felt the warmth of the sun on his face and it made him remember his father’s back. Not the one that had been turned on him since the last few years, the time since he had abandoned his teenage son into the care of a woman he had once fallen in Love with and then out of, but by the way it felt when he, as a kid, had hugged him tight while riding pillion on his Harley. The reassuring warmth that would make him feel safe no matter how fast his father drove. The bike rides had grown shorter and then fewer over the years, until all that remained were the memories of the sour taste of adrenaline in his dry mouth.

The wind rushing through the open windows of his car, blew the hair off his face, with the same zest that his best friend used to ruffle them playfully. He always had cribbed about having to tidy them up again, but she never gave it a second thought. She never minded his complains and neither did he ever mind her bashfulness, rather secretly relished it, but we all keep up appearances and so did he. As the car rushed downhill he felt the same weightless feeling that he had experienced so often, among his buddies, drunk over bottles of whiskey and rum. He chuckled as he realized that he had managed to find that same feeling, which his friends had debated he would never find in anything else. The only regret he had within those 8 seconds of descent was that he wouldn’t be able to tell them what he had discovered.

His thoughts wandered to his beloved, the only girl he had truly loved. He had loved before her and after, but somehow never felt as fulfilled as he felt in loving her. The thin smile stretching across her lips, her hair playful as the summer winds, her beady eyes when she sat beside him in the car the last time their paths had crossed, he remembered it all. He glanced at the passenger seat and thought he saw her again, her eyes lowered in a vain attempt at avoiding his gaze, lost deep in thought, with her lower lip puckered, in the same way that she did whenever something was amiss in her own little world that she had always guarded so ferociously from all. How he wished to lean in and taste those lips again, one last time. He felt the same that he had felt that day, the same burden and the same heart break of having to move away. “Never let me go” she had said once and he never did, in his heart he was always hers and she always his. Seeing her off, as she boarded the ship that had its sails lined with good fortune, was a bitter sweet memory he would never give up drinking upon. “For the greater good” he said and believed whole heartedly. The pain in his chest grew stranger now but before he could crumble to that pain like he had done, a thousand times before, he felt something new this time. His ears heard the crashing metal way after his body felt it ripping him apart. The warm blood rushed to soothe his pain in vain, only painting his eyes a red that he had so often seen. He had relived his life in the few seconds that his car took to hit the rocks below when he drove off the cliff. It was but a handful of precious memories sifted from the decades of his existence. He knew they were few, but his heart was content at what he had achieved in his lifetime. Darkness crept up the corners of his eyes, but his heart glowed bright. “Sing me to sleep, Sing me to sleep” the radio never died.